Lila Matsumoto

Lila Matsumoto was born in Japan, grew up in America, and has been living in Scotland for four years. She is the editor of the little poetry magazine SCREE, and is currently writing a PhD dissertation on the Scottish-American transatlantic poetry connection as witnessed in the little magazines Migrant and Poor.Old.Tired.Horse. Photo by Elzbieth Nowokowska.

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Recently in Jacket2

The mouth opens. It burps and yowls, gasps and laughs, mumbles and yawns. The mouth sings —loudly or quietly and can do it with a shimmer. The mouth whispers. The mouth SCREAMS. The mouth speaks, stutters, and stops.

For this week’s commentary, I interviewed the poet, visual artist, and editor Alan Lau. Alan has served as the arts editor for the Seattle-based Asian Pacific Islander American newspaper The International Examinerfor over thirty years, curating the paper’s literary, visual, and performing arts coverage and the book review supplement the Pacific Reader.

For this week’s commentary, I interviewed the poet, visual artist, and editor Alan Lau. Alan has served as the arts editor for the Seattle-based Asian Pacific Islander American newspaper The International Examinerfor over thirty years, curating the paper’s literary, visual, and performing arts coverage and the book review supplement the Pacific Reader.

A review of 'Goodnight, Marie, May God Have Mercy on Your Soul'

Poetry makes nothing happen. Since 2008, it’s been pretty common for contemporary poetry and the discourse about it to swirl anxiously around this line from W. H. Auden. Nobody likes it; everybody quotes it.

Poetry makes nothing happen. Since 2008, it’s been pretty common for contemporary poetry and the discourse about it to swirl anxiously around this line from W. H. Auden. Nobody likes it; everybody quotes it. But in quoting it, nobody tries to argue for some distance between poetry and politics. It’s more like the question of whether poetry (and art more broadly) is or is not political has been answered by the movement of history ­— it is.